The Revisionism of Jose Maria Sison

Recent documents from the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) have
shown that the heroic struggle of the Filipino people against the
comprador capitalist Duterte regime is advancing despite the efforts by
the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP) and their U.S.
sponsors to crush the Protracted People’s War and destroy the New
People’s Army (NPA). The Party has also shared important theoretical
insights for revolutionaries around the world. For example, they stated
that, “unless they undergo progressive political education and
revolutionary ideological remolding, the intelligentsia and the rest of
the urban petty bourgeoisie tend to be the passive transmission belt of
imperialist and reactionary ideas although they may easily complain
against the degree of exploitation which they suffer.”1 Such
statements and analysis provide key summations of general lessons of the
revolutionary movement in the Philippines which are very relevant for
Maoists around the world. This is especially true given that, in the
U.S., the urban petty bourgeoisie’s propagation of bourgeois and
imperialist ideology is a key obstacle to building the revolutionary
movement.

The CPP’s 2016 Constitution and Program contains many correct ideas
and important insights. However it also advances positions in line with
thepolitics of the CPP’s founding Chairperson Jose Maria Sison. As will
be shown below, Sison’s stands and statements strongly indicate that he
is a revisionist. These stands should analyzed and criticized. Of
particular concern is Sison’s history of supporting revisionist parties
and social imperialist countries. Hopefully this criticism can
contribute to larger political struggles in the International Communist
Movement (ICM) on the question of revisionism and the historical lessons
of past revolutionary struggles.

In the 1980’s Sison sought support for the CPP from both the
social-imperialist Soviet Union, various Eastern Bloc countries, and the
revisionist Chinese Communist Party (CCP) led by Deng Xiaoping. As Sison
put it, “my political writings from 1986 to 1988...reflected an
optimism that there could be broad anti-imperialist solidarity between
the National Democratic Front of the Philippines and the forces in China
and the Soviet-bloc countries.”2 He did not explain how
anti-imperialist solidarity was possible with an imperialist country
like the USSR.

More recently, Sison has equivocated on when capitalism was restored in
the USSR. He has also repeatedly stated that capitalism was not fully
restored until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Sison has used
this claim to portray the Soviet Revisionists as a less-bad form of
imperialism, and apologize for bourgeois rule in the country. This
contradicts the Maoist analysis that capitalism was restored by 1955 and
that Khrushchev’s rise to power restored the dictatorship of the
bourgeoisie in the USSR. It also covers over the reality that the Soviet
Union developed into an imperialist country. These lines are related to
Sison’s repeated efforts to paint contemporary Chinese social
imperialism in rosy colors, discredit Lenin’s analysis of capitalist
imperialism, and promote the view that Chinese imperialism is a “lesser
evil” compared to U.S. imperialism. Sison has repeatedly put forward a
wide variety of revisionist theses and worked to reverse many key
verdicts. If followed to its logical conclusion, his political line
leads to the betrayal of the revolution in favor of cozying up to a new
imperialist master.

Clarity on the reactionary nature of Chinese imperialism is essential
for revolutionaries around the world, lest they be deceived into
believing that Chinese imperialists can be a friend to the oppressed and
exploited people of the world. Sison’s praise of Chinese imperialism,
and his prior support for Soviet imperialism raise real questions about
what path he wants the Filipino revolutionary movement to take. His
equivocal support for the Chinese state and his praise of state
capitalist and revisionist regimes around the world have also been
disorienting to supporters of the Filipino revolution. Clarity on these
matters is essential.

In the 1980’s Sison promoted the idea of “broad anti-imperialist
solidarity between the National Democratic Front of the Philippines and
the forces in China and the Soviet-bloc countries.”3 As part of this
effort, the organ of the CPP in charge of international relations even
claimed that the CPSU was “proletarian internationalist rather than
social-imperialist” because it had “supported third world liberation
movements.”4 In making this claim the CPP was apologizing for
Brezhnev’s social-imperialism and portraying his foreign policy of
imperialist invasions and economic domination of oppressed nations as
“proletarian internationalism.”

This conception is in contradiction with the basic principles of
Marxism-Leninism-Maoism (MLM). As Mao and the Central Committee of the
CCP outlined in the polemic On Khrushchov’s Phoney Communism and Its
Historical Lessons for the World,5 capitalism had already been
restored under Khrushchev’s leadership of the USSR. Mao and others in
China also concluded that the Soviet Union had developed into a social
imperialist power. This meant that the country was socialist in name
only, and was in actuality a capitalist-imperialist power practicing
fascist dictatorship over the people.6 As Mao put it in 1964: “The
Soviet Union today is under the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, a
dictatorship of the big bourgeoisie, a dictatorship of the German
fascist type, a dictatorship of the Hitler type.”7

As early as the 1960s and 1970s, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
(CPSU) was invading other countries like Czechoslovakia, threatening to
invade and nuke socialist China, and supporting neocolonial governments
such as India in their repression of revolutionary forces like the
erstwhile Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist), which was one of
the precursors to the Communist Party of India (Maoist). The CPSU’s
foreign policy during this period reflected the underlying social and
economic situation in the USSR, where capitalism had been restored, a
state capitalist bourgeoisie in the party was exporting capital abroad
to facilitate neocolonial relations through the Council for Mutual
Economic Assistance (COMECON), and brutal fascist repression was
practiced against almost every form of political dissent internal to the
USSR.

As one anonymous article in a 1974 edition of Peking Review
highlighted:

The Brezhnev clique also makes use of “mental hospitals” to torture
those opposed to the dark rule of the Soviet revisionists. Those who
show discontent with Soviet revisionist fascist rule and dare to rebel
against it are arbitrarily declared “lunatics,” “mentally disordered,”
“schizophrenic” and “mental patients” and thrown into “mental hospitals”
controlled by the “state security committee” and the “ministry of the
interior.” One report says several thousand people are imprisoned in one
“mental hospital” alone. The internees in these places are subjected to
cruel beatings and forced to submit to drastic treatment, including
poisonous drugs, in an effort to make them change their political views.
Some of them have been bodily and mentally injured and have become
incurable wrecks.

The Soviet revisionist renegades have time and again dispatched police
and military forces, including tanks and armoured units and paratroops,
to carry out bloody suppression of the Soviet people who have risen in
rebellion.8

Given this reality, and the capitalist restoration in China which
followed the coup in 1976,9 it would have been impossible for the CPP
to practice “anti-imperialist solidarity” with countries such as the
social-fascist USSR and the post 1976 pro-imperialist and state
capitalist China. Sison’s efforts to practice “solidarity” with these
countries represented a departure from proletarian internationalism, in
favor of an opportunist pragmatism of the Deng Xiaoping “black cat white
cat” type.10

By his own admission, Sison and others in the CPP leadership worked to
orchestrate meetings with the CPSU and Eastern Bloc parties in the hopes
of securing arms deals to accelerate the revolution in the
Philippines.11 In At Home in the World, Sison admitted that he “was
aware that the representatives of the CPP occasionally met with
representatives of the Soviet CP.”12 However, the CPSU wanted the CPP
to merge with the Soviet-backed Lava revisionist electoral party.13
While, the CPP did not acquiesce to these demands, Sison and others in
the leadership were willing to apologize for Soviet social imperialism,
reverse their verdict on the capitalist nature of the USSR, and claim
that the CPSU and Eastern-bloc parties were genuine Marxist-Leninists.

Although Sison and others claimed that such efforts to secure arms deals
and develop “solidarity” with such parties were in line with the
principle of self-reliance,14 it is hard to see how this was the
case, especially when efforts to establish bilateral relations with
parties like the CPSU required the CPP to reverse its verdict on
revisionism and Soviet social imperialism.15 In the CPP’s 1968
Founding Congress it concluded that the CPSU was a revisionist party
leading a social imperialist state. In 1987, when asked about the CPP’s
efforts to develop fraternal relations with revisionist parties around
the world, Sison stated, “since a few years ago, the CPP has voluntarily
ceased to apply certain terms or labels [such as revisionist] to other
parties.”16 Sison went on to state that “The CPP considers as matters
belonging to history those differences in the past arising from disputes
between certain parties.”17

In this comment Sison was not only referring to the prior dispute
between the CPP and the CPSU, but also the dispute between Mao and
Soviet Revisionists. The question of revisionism cannot be considered as
a matter “belonging to history” as it concerns the very nature of
Marxism itself and historically has been key in determining whether or
not a communist party will stay on the road to revolution and communism.
As Mao put it, “the rise to power of revisionism means the rise to power
of the bourgeoisie.”18

Sison would later justify this reversal by claiming that the CPP’s
previous conclusions that the CPSU was revisionist, and that capitalism
was restored in the USSR “were not the result of any direct
investigation of the Soviet economy and society by Filipino
revolutionaries and social researchers, but were based on secondary
sources since 1963—when the great ideological debate was raging—from
parties with which we had been aligned.”19 In line with this reversal
of verdicts, in 1986, the Executive Committee of the CPP concluded that
the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries were “socialist because
their economies were still dominated by state-owned enterprises.”20

This represented a sharp departure from the Maoist understanding of
revisionism and capitalist restoration. The transformations in the USSR
that took place under the oversight of Khrushchev and Brezhnev resulted
in the means of production—which formerly belonged to the Soviet
people—being “owned by and at the service of a new bureaucratic
monopoly bourgeoisie.”21 To ignore the actual relations of production
in the USSR because of state ownership of the means of production—as
Sison and the CPP have in the past—is disingenuous and in
contradiction with an MLM understanding of the dictatorship of the
proletariat. In light of similar erroneous arguments made in the 1960s,
revolutionaries in China referred to the Soviet Union as social
imperialism, based on the analysis that state monopoly capitalism
existed there.22 Grasping this basic point is essential for Maoist
revolutionaries today.

What Sison did not mention in the above remarks is that these “secondary
sources” which the CPP drew on in its Founding Congress were articles
written by Mao and others in the CCP in the Polemic on the General Line
of the International Communist Movement. In thus dismissing Mao and the
CCP’s analysis of the development of capitalism in the USSR, Sison was
revising the lessons of revolutionary history, and opportunistically
apologizing for the imperialist policies of the USSR in the hopes that
they would provide the CPP with arms and funding.23 Sison even went
so far as to imply that those who were critical of the CPP’s overtures
to the CPSU and CCP were “dogmatists who keep on debating, splitting and
liquidating their parties or groups over theoretical and international
questions, divorced from revolutionary practice in their respective
countries.”24 In doing so, he effectively dismissed the revolutionary
efforts of Maoists who were critical of his efforts to cozy up to
revisionist parties around the world.

Instead of adopting a principled line based on the revolutionary lessons
of the ICM, Sison pushed the CPP to cozy up with revisionist parties
such as the post-1976 CCP and the social-imperialist CPSU. While there
is a need for revolutionaries to take advantage of contradictions
between competing imperialist powers and other reactionary forces to
advance the revolution, it is quite a different thing to claim that
imperialist powers can be part of an “anti-imperialist” united front.
The latter is the logic of the Second International as well as modern
revisionists and social-chauvinists.25

2. Sison’s Equivocation on the Restoration of Capitalism in the USSR

As we have already shown, Sison and the leadership of the CPP were
willing to reverse their earlier verdict from their Founding Congress
that capitalism had been restored in the USSR. This was part of a larger
effort in the 1980’s to secure arms deals and support from revisionist
parties around the world. However, even after the collapse of the USSR
in 1991, Sison has continued to equivocate on the question of when
capitalism was restored in the Soviet Union. On numerous occasions he
has stated that capitalism was not fully restored in the USSR until its
collapse. This is related to a larger trend in the CPP which, even as
recently as in its 2016 Constitution and Program, has been ambiguous
on the question of capitalist restoration in various countries around
the world.

In 1992, under the pseudonym of Armando Liwanag, Sison published the
text Stand for Socialism Against Modern Revisionism. In this text he
worked to justify his earlier reversals of the CPP’s original verdict
that the USSR was a social imperialist country. As part of this effort,
he claimed that the Soviet Union went through “stages of camouflaged
counterrevolution in a period of 38 years, 1953 to 1991,”26 and that
Gorbachev “completed the process of capitalist restoration started by
Khrushchev and presided over the destruction of the Soviet Union.”27

In recent documents, such as his 2012 Development, Current Status and
Prospects of Maoist Theory and Practice in the Philippines, Sison has
continued to support similar views. For example, he repeatedly refers to
“the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the full restoration of
capitalism in revisionist-ruled countries in the period of
1989-91.”28 Sison even had the gall to state that this “vindicated
Mao’s position on the crucial importance and necessity of the struggle
against revisionism and the theory of continuing revolution under
proletarian dictatorship.”29 What he did not state, was that Mao’s
view was that capitalism was restored in the Soviet Union by 1955. Thus,
it was not necessary to wait until the collapse of the USSR in 1991 to
claim that Mao’s position had been “vindicated.” In fact, in doing so,
Sison is distorting the actual history of capitalist restoration in the
USSR, and providing cover for the CPP’s earlier rapprochement with
Soviet revisionism.

In contrast to Sison’s view, Maoists in China were clear that, “whether
it is capitalist imperialism or social imperialism, they are identical
in their basic economic characteristics. Their main economic basis is
monopoly capitalism.”30 Sison’s writings obfuscate this reality, and
paint Soviet revisionism—which was a form of capitalist
imperialism—as something “less bad” than the capitalist imperialism of
an openly capitalist country. However, Mao and others in the CCP were
clear that Soviet social imperialists were socialist in name only, and
imperialist in deed, and as Marx put it, “The name of a thing is
entirely external to its nature.”31

In Fundamentals of Political Economy, the Maoist leadership in
Shanghai summed up some key insights on the nature of Soviet social
imperialism, and its underlying capitalist nature:

In socialist society, the state-operated economy based on socialist
state ownership is a leading element in the national economy. Once the
revisionist renegade clique usurps the leadership of the socialist
economy, it is naturally transformed into a state monopoly capitalist
economy. This is because the more productive forces the new bureaucratic
monopoly bourgeoisie puts under state ownership representing its
interests, the more it can control the whole society’s wealth in the
name of the “state.” This way, it not only can continue using the
state label to deceive the laboring people, but through state capitalism
can also tightly control the national economy. Therefore, the
outstanding characteristic of the Soviet Union’s capitalist economy is
that state monopoly capitalism controls and commands everything.32

From this it should be clear, that not only was capitalism restored in
the Soviet Union by 1955, but it was a capitalist-imperialist power by
this point. Thus, while the USSR maintained a legal form of state
ownership, this was in no way an obstacle to the restoration of
capitalism. On the contrary, it represented the particular form of
capitalism and monopoly ownership which existed in the USSR. State
ownership also provided a convenient cover for the bourgeoisie to
deceive the people by claiming that their efforts to further monopolize
every aspect of the economy were actually for the benefit of the people.

By proclaiming that capitalism was not “fully restored” in the USSR
until 1991, Sison plays into the lies and deception of the
capitalist-roaders and revisionists of China and the USSR. He covers
over the important differences between the system of socialist state
ownership and state capitalism under the direction of a revisionist
party. This is part of a disturbing distortion of the differences
between the dictatorship of the proletariat and the dictatorship of the
bourgeoisie. Such distortions can lead to the erroneous belief that a
social imperialist country is perhaps, “less bad” than a capitalist
imperialist country. However, from the perspective of MLM, social
imperialism is just another form of capitalist imperialism. While one
particular imperialist power may be less powerful than another, every
imperialist power is run for and by monopoly capitalists who seek to
expand their control of the world’s markets, territory, and people.

Given the role that Sison played in the Founding Congress of the CPP, it
is clear that he understood this to some degree at one point. However,
over the past three decades he has consistently put forward revisionist
and renegade positions on the question of capitalist restoration in the
USSR, and the capitalist nature of various former Soviet satellites,
such as Cuba and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

Even more concerning is that similar ideas are, at times, put forward in
official statements from the CPP. For example, in their 2016
Constitution and Program, the CPP referred to “the blatant and full
restoration of capitalism in certain countries and disintegration of
revisionist parties and regimes.” Not only does the emphasis on the
“blatant and full restoration of capitalism” resonate with Sison’s
analysis of capitalist restoration in the USSR, the CPP also states that
this has only happened in “certain countries” without specifying which.

From a Maoist perspective, today there is not a single socialist country
in the world. However, Sison has, on numerous occasions, stated or
implied that various revisionist regimes, state capitalist countries,
and other such governments are actually socialist. For example, in 2013,
he issued a statement through the International League of Peoples’
Struggles (ILPS), in which he stated “We, the International League of
Peoples’ Struggle, will always be inspired by the revolutionary example
and deeds of Comrade Hugo Chavez in fighting for national and social
liberation and in advocating the cause of socialism.”33 However, Hugo
Chavez was not a socialist, and the regime he led did not advance
socialism in theory or practice. Venezuela is not, was not, and has
never been a socialist country. While Chavez did speak of socialism, in
practice Venezuela has been a largely state-capitalist country. Sison’s
related claim that Chavez, “advocated socialism as the banner of the
21st century” raises many questions about what sort of “socialism” Sison
envisions in the Philippines. In addition to such glowing appraisals of
representatives of the state capitalism of the Bolivarian “revolution,”
Sison has made similar statements in support of the DPRK and other
countries.34

While it is not clear that the CPP shares all the same views as Sison,
it is concerning that they use ambiguous language when discussing the
restoration of capitalism in former socialist states around the world.
It is also concerning that they have published a number of statements
supporting revisionist parties around the work, including the Freedom
Road Socialist Organization,35 Kim Jong Un’s leadership of the
Worker’s Party of Korea,36 the Communist Party of Cuba,37 and
others. This sort of ambiguity and support for revisionist parties and
state capitalist governments leaves open the door to a foreign policy
which supports one imperialist power’s struggle against another on the
grounds that the former is “the lesser of two evils.” This sort of
approach was pursued by Deng Xiaoping and other rightists during the
late Cultural Revolution. They pushed for a strategic alliance with the
U.S. imperialists as opposed to the tactical opening favored by the
Maoists. The rightists in China claimed that the U.S. was a lesser
threat and less dominantly globally than Soviet imperialist
counterparts. These efforts were directly related to the two-line
struggle in China, and efforts by rightists to restore capitalism in
China.38

3. Sison’s Support for Chinese Social Imperialism

After Mao’s death in the fall of 1976, the rightists in the CCP led a
counter-revolutionary coup and restored capitalism in China. With the
bourgeoisie in the dominant position in society, they began the process
of destroying collective industry and agriculture and facilitating
various forms of private accumulation. This process has led to the
development of a bureaucratic monopoly capitalist class in China. By at
least the mid-2000s, China had developed into a capitalist imperialist
state, and was increasingly exporting capital abroad and pursuing
foreign policies in line with this.39

More recently, China has begun setting up international military bases,
deploying thousands of its troops abroad in UN “peace keeping” forces to
get them combat experience, and sending military advisers to places like
Syria. Chinese imperialists have also worked to develop military,
political, and monetary institutions outside of the control of the
traditional U.S.-run Breton Woods institutions like the World Bank and
International Monetary Fund (IMF) and related security organizations
like the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). As part of this
effort, they have created projects and organizations like the Shanghai
Cooperation Organization (SCO), the Asian Infrastructure Development
Bank, and the One Belt One Road Initiative.

All of these efforts and institutions represent efforts by China, a
rising imperialist power, to redivide the world’s markets, territory,
and spheres of influence; they are part of a coordinated effort by
Chinese imperialists to dominate oppressed nations politically,
economically, and militarily. Therefore, while they are competing with
the U.S. ruling class and their imperialist allies, these efforts by the
Chinese monopoly capitalist class are not pro-people, but rather
represent the logic of capital, and are fundamentally and
antagonistically in contradiction with the interests of the proletariat
and the oppressed nations of the world.

In line with this reality, the two leading Maoist Parties in the world,
CPI (Maoist)40 and the CPP41 have condemned Chinese social
imperialism. The CPP has issued a strong condemnation of Chinese
imperialist efforts to dominate other countries economically and its
related build up of military forces:

China is pushing for “economic integration” of ASEAN and APEC countries
under the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership. Like the US,
China aims to push for all-out liberalization under its “one belt, one
road” project to tighten the integration of these countries into its
Factory Asia “global value chain” to take advantage of cheapest
available labor. To facilitate rapid transportation of capital goods and
consumption commodities, China aims to construct a network of rails and
ports. This infrastructure binge, in turn, will help absorb its surplus
steel.

There is rivalry and intense contradictions between the leading
capitalist powers especially amid the protracted crisis of the global
capitalist system. While the US imperialists remain the biggest military
power, China continues to strengthen its armed capability and is fast
developing its capability to project power overseas.42

This analysis clearly grasps the dialectical relationship between an
imperialist power’s economic and military domination of oppressed
nations. The CPP’s analysis also shows how sharpening competition
between imperialist powers is related to military build ups in
preparation for an inter-imperialist war. While Sison has followed the
new line of the CPP in correctly identifying China as a capitalist
imperialist country, he has repeatedly equivocated about what this
actually means, often implying that China perhaps practices a “less bad”
form of imperialism. For example, in a 2014 interview, he stated that:

China has not yet engaged in a war of aggression to acquire a colony, a
semicolony, protectorate or dependent country. It is not yet very
violent in the struggle for a redivision of the world among the big
capitalist powers, like the US, Japan, Germany and Italy behaved in
joining the ranks of imperialist powers. It is with respect to China’s
contention with more aggressive and plunderous imperialist powers that
may be somehow helpful to revolutionary movements in an objective and
indirect way. China is playing an outstanding role in the economic bloc
BRICS and in the security organization Shanghai Cooperation Organization
beyond US control.43

Such statements reveal that Sison does not grasp the dialectical
relationship between the economic and military aspects of imperialism.
In line with this, Sison has made some statements which draw into
question the continuing validity of Lenin’s analysis of capitalist
imperialism. For example, in the same interview he stated that, “by
Lenin’s economic definition of modern imperialism, China may qualify as
imperialist.” This leaves open to the door by implying that by a
separate “military definition” of imperialism, China may still be “in
the clear.” Sison either does not understand the most basic lessons of
Lenin’s analysis or he willfully distorts these lessons to justify his
praise for Chinese imperialism. By framing Lenin’s writing on
imperialism as an “economic definition,” Sison negates this analysis and
seeks to paint imperialism in rosy colors. In contrast to Sison’s views,
in Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism Lenin demonstrated
how, in the economic and political struggle between imperialist powers
to redivide the world and its markets, war is a continuation of politics
by other means, and peace between imperialist powers prepares the
grounds for war.

Lenin’s analysis shows that the struggle between imperialist powers
first happens in the economic sphere, but when rival imperialist powers
can no longer secure their aims through economic competition they
inevitably resort to military means to attempt to take control of
markets, territory, and resources from their rivals. Thus, in the age of
capitalist-imperialism, when the world is completely divided up between
rival imperialist blocs, “peace” is but the appearance form of
preparations for wars of re-division and conquest. As Lenin put it,
“peaceful alliances prepare the ground for wars, and in their turn grow
out of wars; the one conditions the other, producing alternating forms
of peaceful and non-peaceful struggle on one and the same basis of
imperialist connections and relations within world economics and world
politics.”44 So while China has yet to wage a war of aggression to
dominate an oppressed nation—or seize a territory or market from an
imperialist rival45—the economic and political policies that they
are currently pursuing are preparing the basis for war. This could be a
war effort against an oppressed nation, or even a world war between
rival imperialist blocs.

A basic investigation of the Chinese state’s military policies reveals
that the ruling class is clearly preparing for a large-scale
inter-imperialist war. This is evident in their militarization of the
South China Sea—including seizing islands in the territorial waters of
the Philippines—their construction of military bases abroad, their
development of a sixth generation air superiority fighter, their various
military exercises simulating inter-imperialist warfare, and more. These
underlying realities are in line with Lenin’s correct conclusion that
“peaceful” competition46 between imperialist powers leads to warfare
between them, and that such struggle is conducted on “one and the same
basis of imperialist connections and relations within world economics
and world politics.” By ignoring Lenin’s key insights, Sison venerates
Chinese social-imperialism as less aggressive than U.S. imperialism and
portrays it as a potential ally to the oppressed people of the world. In
reality, Chinese imperialism is no such thing.

Sison’s revisions to the MLM understanding of capitalist-imperialism
lead him to conclude that Chinese imperialism is “less bad” than its
competitors, simply because China has not yet needed to launch a war of
aggression to ensure its imperialist domination of oppressed nations.
Even more disturbing is Sison’s praise of China’s role in BRICS and the
Shanghai Cooperation Organization. In praising such efforts as
“outstanding” he is endorsing the efforts of Chinese imperialists to
further control, oppress, and dominate oppressed nations throughout the
world. This is revisionism, through and through. Sison’s views on
imperialism are not in line with MLM, but rather represent a revisionist
view which justifies cooperation with the monopoly capitalist class of
one country on the grounds that they are less bad than another. If
followed to its logical conclusion it will lead to a betrayal of the
revolution in favor of cozying up to new imperialist masters.

4. Sison’s Influence on the CPP’s Views on the Foreign Policy of a Socialist State

While the CPP has been much more critical of Chinese social imperialism
than Sison, on other issues the party has adopted policies and views
more in line with Sison’s revisionism. This tendency is particularly
evident in the field of foreign policy. As we have shown, Sison has a
long-standing history of revisionist politics and support for
reactionary regimes around the world that are opposed, to one degree or
another, to U.S. imperialism. This sort of politics covers over the
difference between a proletarian and bourgeois opposition to U.S.
imperialism. While the CPP does not openly support these politics, its
views on foreign policy lead it to endorse similar positions at times.

For example, in the 2016 Constitution and Program, the CPP, referring
to its future foreign policy after a successful revolution, states:

The People's Democratic Republic of the Philippines shall develop the
closest relations with the anti-imperialist and socialist countries, the
neighboring countries in Southeast Asia, Northeast Asia and the Pacific
and all the third world and other oppressed and exploited
countries.47

There is a real need for new democratic and socialist countries to
develop close relations with other such countries and to support
people’s struggles around the world. However, there are no socialist
countries in the world today, and it is concerning that the CPP has
repeatedly ambiguously referred to “the restoration of capitalism in
certain countries” without explicitly stating that capitalism has been
restored in every country which was once socialist.

There is also a need to be clear on the difference between a country
that is resolutely anti-imperialist in principle and practice, and
countries which merely oppose particular instances of imperialist
aggression. A country which is opposed to one imperialist power, but a
lackey for another is not anti-imperialist. Likewise, countries which
allow the super-exploitation of their people by imperialist firms are
not anti-imperialist. Therefore it is very concerning that the CPP
considers countries such as Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador to be
anti-imperialist.48 This analysis is in line with Sison’s views about
these countries, which he has made publicly known through a series of
statements as Chairperson of ILPS.

Cuba is a state-capitalist regime which was for a long time a Soviet
neocolony as part of COMECON. Since the collapse of the USSR, Cuba has
opened up to investment from other foreign capitalists, including those
from Brazil, Canada, and the EU. Under Hugo Chavez, Venezuela
nationalized the oil industry and was able to ride the wave of rising
oil prices which increased from $10 per barrel in 1998 to over $100
per barrel by the mid-2000s. As of 2012, 96% of Venezuela’s export
revenue came from oil sales, with the majority going to the U.S. While
the Venezuelan government used some of these profits to provide social
welfare programs, the extreme dependence of these programs on the
profits from oil sales to imperialist powers means that Venezuela is
entirely caught up in the capitalist imperialist system, and remains
anti-imperialist in name only. What’s more, Venezuela’s social welfare
programs were limited in scope and the state collaborated closely with
firms to put down (often violently) organized workers movements that
threatened the profitability of these operations. As one scholar put it,
referring to Bolivia, Venezuela, and Ecuador:

Venezuela, Bolivia and the entire spectrum of social movements, trade
union confederations, parties and fractions of parties do not call for
the abolition of capitalism, the repudiation of the debt, the complete
expropriation of U.S. or EEC banks or multinational corporations, or any
rupture in relations with the U.S. For example, in Venezuela, private
national and foreign banks earned over 30% rate of return in 2005-2006,
foreign-owned oil companies reaped record profits between 2004-2006 and
less than 1% of the biggest landed estates were fully expropriated and
titles turned over to landless peasants.

Capital-labor relations still operate in a framework heavily weighted on
behalf of business and labor contractors who rely on subcontractors who
continue to dominate hiring and firing in more than one half of the
large enterprises. The Venezuelan military and police continue to arrest
suspected Colombian guerrillas and turn them over to the Colombian
police. Venezuela and U.S.-client President Uribe of Colombia have
signed several high-level security and economic co-operation
agreements.49

This helps to clarify the degree of dependence of these countries on
foreign capital and imperialist powers. More recently, China has been
gaining a major foothold in South America and the Caribbean.50 Even
before the 2008 financial crisis, Venezuela faced a major economic
crisis of its own. Starting in 2007, China provided the government with
over $50 billion in various loans over a number of years, and followed
this up with a $20 billion investment in 2015 after oil prices again
fell below $50 per barrel.51 In 2016, Ecuador hosted over 100
Chinese capitalists in an effort to encourage Chinese investment in the
country.52 At present, Chinese capitalists control around 90% of
Ecuador’s oil reserves.53 This is part of the overall consolidation
of the Ecuadorian state to the status of a Chinese neocolony. All of
this should demonstrate that these countries are not in fact
anti-imperialist, but rather neocolonies run by reactionary compradors
and feudal despots at the behest of imperialist masters. Without clarity
on this matter, the CPP, in the name of anti-imperialism, will end up
supporting reactionary regimes that oppress their people and do the
bidding of foreign monopoly capitalists. Ultimately such support leads
to collaboration with one imperialist power against another, in the name
of “anti-imperialism.” Similar mistakes have led to disastrous setbacks
throughout the history of the ICM.

There can, of course, be a basis for a degree of cooperation with
various reactionary governments, especially as a tactic to take
advantage of contradictions between imperialist powers. However, such an
approach requires a clear understanding that the countries in question
are not, in fact, anti-imperialist in essence. Otherwise, in the name of
anti-imperialism, a socialist state or revolutionary party will end up
supporting a reactionary regime and betraying the peoples’ movements
locally and internationally.

Of related concern is the CPP’s statement that it wants to “develop
close relations of the Communist Party of the Philippines with fraternal
proletarian parties and other friendly parties in other countries.”54
By itself, this statement is not concerning. It is absolutely necessary
for Communist Parties, in the spirit of proletarian internationalism, to
develop close relations with other proletarian parties, and even to
support and collaborate with non-proletarian parties in united front
efforts. However, in practice the CPP has repeatedly praised revisionist
parties around the world. There is a big difference between working with
a progressive but non-proletarian party in a revolutionary united front,
and showering the ruling party of a state-capitalist regime with false
praise by calling it pro-socialist or anti-imperialist.

The revisionist parties that the CPP has praised are at best obstacles
to developing a revolutionary movement in their country, and at worst
outright compradors and state-capitalists. For example, the CPP has
congratulated and praised Kim Jong-un and his government on a number of
occasions. For example in 2017, they stated “Unlike Kim’s government
which has provided all out support to scientific and technological
development to modernize North Korean society, the Philippine government
under Duterte is perpetuating the country’s state of non-industrial and
agrarian backwardness.”55 While Duterte’s government is a corrupt
comprador regime waging a war on the Filipino people, the Korean
Worker’s Party has not “provided all out support” to the scientific and
technological development of North Korean society. Only under the
dictatorship of the proletariat is such support possible, and the
Worker’s Party of Korea abandoned the road to communism long ago. This
and other statements from the CPP distort the essence of the WPK, which
through its form of state-capitalist rule has actually retarded the
development of productive forces and the transformation of social
relations in contrast to what is possible under socialism.56

It should also be noted that the effort of U.S. imperialists—together
with other imperialist powers—have also played a key role in
oppressing people of North Korea. During their genocidal war on North
Korea they bombed nearly every piece of infrastructure in the country,
from buildings to dams and irrigation works. They also used chemical and
biological weapons to slaughter the Korean people and the Chinese
People’s Volunteers who were helping in the war effort. Since this point
they have used sanctions, espionage, and embargoes to hamper to economy
of North Korea. They have also repeatedly and continuously threatened
the country with invasion and even nuclear strikes. The actions of U.S.
imperialists must be unequivocally opposed. However, the WPK does not
represent a revolutionary opposition to U.S. imperialism.

After the death of Fidel Castro in 2016, the CPP issued a statement of
support to Fidel and the Communist Party of Cuba (CPC).57 The
statement, titled Red Salute to Comrade Fidel Castro! included claims
that Fidel and the CPC “established one the most enduring
anti-imperialist and democratic government [sic] in the world.” The
CPP made no mention of the CPC’s consolidation to the status of a Soviet
neocolony under COMECON, nor did they mention Castro’s revisionist
criticism of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, and his
opposition to the need to continue the revolution under the dictatorship
of the proletariat.

They also erroneously claim that the Cuban government “carried out
widespread land reform and collectivization” after the revolution. The
reality is that, after the revolution, the Cuban government took over
the U.S. sugar latifundias and replaced them by state-owned farms. These
farms were not in the democratic control of the masses, but rather were
run by a small number of state bureaucrats and produced sugar that was
sold to the Soviet Union through COMECON. Thus, this was not a true
collectivization of agriculture, but rather a form of state-capitalism
in which the masses were exploited for the profit of domestic compradors
and foreign imperialists.

All of this draws into question the CPP’s conclusion that the Cuban
masses continue to “relentlessly push their Revolution forward.”58
While the anti-imperialist revolution against the U.S.-backed Batista
regime was a huge victory for the Cuban people, it was subsequently
betrayed by Castro and the leadership of the CPC when they agreed to
become a Soviet neocolony.59 All of this shows that the CPP’s recent
overtures to the CPC are deeply concerning, especially because they
cover over the two-line struggle in the ICM between the Maoist road to
Communism and the line of revisionism and capitulation to imperialism.

The CPP has also issued a number of congratulatory statements to the
U.S.-based revisionist group Freedom Road Socialist Organization
(FRSO).60 There are two FRSO groups in the U.S. and both trace their
origins to a 1978 split with the Revolutionary Communist Party. The
CPP’s statement is in support of FRSO/Fight Back! which held its 8th
Congress earlier this year. In their statement of congratulations the
CPP erroneously claims that:

By helping lead the struggles against the right-wing policies of the
Trump regime, you [FRSO/Fight Back!] are striking deep roots among the
toiling masses of workers and other oppressed and exploited groups. In
doing so, you [FRSO/Fight Back!] are making Marxism-Leninism a truly
vibrant and effective instrument of the proletariat for their class
liberation.61

What they do not mention is that FRSO/Fight Back!—much like the other
FRSO group—is a revisionist political party which claims that
countries like Cuba, China, Vietnam, and the DPRK are socialist. These
politics are reflected in FRSO’s work in the U.S. which is aimed at
rallying people around a revisionist politics of toadying Chinese
imperialism. What’s more FRSO is not “striking deep roots among the
toiling masses of workers and other oppressed and exploited groups” but
rather primarily organizing among petty-bourgeois students. In addition,
the leadership of FRSO has been repeatedly accused of covering-up sexual
abuse within its ranks.62 Overall, it is difficult to see how
developing relations with an anti-people and revisionist organization
like FRSO/Fight Back! can help the Filipino revolutionary movement,
especially when there are genuine Maoist forces here in the U.S.
organizing among the working class and oppressed masses.

These views have concerning implications for the future direction of the
revolution in the Philippines and relate to the larger question of the
foreign policy of a socialist state which the CPP raises in their 2016
Constitution and Program. There is an underlying contradiction between
the national interests of the socialist state and the interests of the
international proletarian revolution. While this contradiction can be
resolved through a principled revolutionary line, if handled incorrectly
it can lead to the betrayal of revolutionary movements at home and
abroad. There is also an intrinsic link between the foreign policy of a
socialist state, the state’s domestic policy, and the two-line struggle
to stay on the road to communism.

For example, during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR) in
China, the Maoist leadership correctly decided to develop a tactical
alliance with the U.S., known as the “Opening to the West.” This was
part of an effort to sharpen the contradictions between the U.S. and
USSR and to decrease the likelihood of a Soviet invasion and/or nuclear
attack.63 However, this policy also created an opening for rightists
such as Deng Xiaoping, Qiao Guanhua, and Zhou Enlai64 to push for a
strategic alliance with the U.S. instead of a tactical one. Such a push
entailed withdrawing support for revolutionary movements around the
world—especially in U.S. neocolonies such as the Philippines where the
CPP had recently been founded and launched the start of the People’s War
which continues to this day—and supporting reactionary regimes like
Pakistan in policies like their brutal bombing campaign to suppress the
independence movement in what is now Bangladesh (at the time known as
East Pakistan). Qiao even went as far as to support Israel and oppose
the repatriation of Palestinians on the grounds that “a new problem of
Israeli refugees might be created as a result.”65 In doing so, these
rightists were subordinating the interests of the international
proletarian revolution to the interest of the Chinese state.

Such policies were justified on the grounds that the Soviet Union was
the principal enemy of the people of the world, and that therefore
supporting reactionary U.S.-backed regimes and comprador movements was
the lesser of two evils. These maneuvers were part of a concerted effort
by capitalist roaders in the party leadership to take China off the road
to communism.

Given this history, it is very important for Maoist parties and
organizations around the world to closely study the struggles over
foreign policy in socialist China and the USSR before the restoration of
capitalism. Only through such study will it be possible to accurately
sum up the successes and failures of the Maoist leadership and avoid
repeating key mistakes which played a crucial role in the defeat of the
GPCR. The CPP should reassess its views on the “anti-imperialist” nature
of countries such as Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, among other
matters and study how the rightists in the CCP were able to undermine
the proletarian internationalist foreign policy of the Maoist leadership
in China. It is our hope that these remarks are helpful in advancing the
heroic struggles of the Filipino people in their efforts to overthrow
the reactionary U.S.-backed comprador state, establish a New Democratic
State, and continue on the road to communism.

Communist Party of the Philippines, Constitution and Program,
2016, p. 61. ↩

A talk of Chairman Mao’s on May 11, 1964. Cited in, Editorial
Staff of Renmin Ribao (People’s Daily), Hongqi (Red Flag), and
Jiefangjun Bao (People’s Liberation Army Daily), “Leninism or
Social Imperialism? A Commentary on the Centenary of the Birth of
the Great Lenin,” Peking Review, Vol. 13, Issue #17, April 24,
1970, p. 7.
http://www.massline.org/PekingReview/PR1970/PR1970-17.pdf↩

This coup, led Deng Xiaoping, included the arrest of the Maoist
leadership of the Four: Zhang Chunqiao, Wang Hongwen, Yao Wenyuan,
and Jiang Ching. The Four were Mao’s closest allies during the GPCR,
and were increasingly leading the life-and-death-struggle against
the the capitalist roaders in the CCP as Mao’s health declined in
the last few years of his life. After Mao’s death, the Four were
labeled as “The Gang of Four” by Deng Xiaoping and other
capitalist-roaders and thrown in prison. ↩

In 1962 Deng first publicly stated his theory that “It doesn’t
matter whether a cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice.”
During the GPCR this theory was intensely criticized as a
“pragmatist” justification for restoring capitalism on the grounds
that it “catches mice,” meaning that it promotes production. Deng
and other capitalist-roaders were advocates of a form productive
forces determinism that justified the promotion of capitalist social
relations (in the name of developing production) on the grounds that
the principal contradiction in Chinese society was the contradiction
between the advanced socialist social system and the backwards
productive forces. More broadly the “black cat, white cat” statement
has been used to justify all sorts of opportunism. ↩

Jose Maria Sison: At Home in the World, Portrait of a
Revolutionary, Conversations With Ninotchka Rosca (Greensboro,
North Carolina: Open House Publishing LLC, 2004), p. 151. ↩

The Lava-revisionists are the Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas-1930
(PKP-1930). While the party started as a revolutionary party, it
eventually degenerated into a largely an electoral party, and it has
a long-standing history of selling out the Filipino people’s
revolutionary struggles to one imperialist master or another. The
CPP was founded after Sison and others led a rectification movement,
struggled against various revisionist tendencies in the PKP, and
eventually split from the revisionist party. In his 1970 document
Philippine Society and Revolution Sison describes the
Lava-revisionists leadership of the PKP as “counterrevolutionary
leadership of the bourgeois reactionary gang.” In our view this is
an accurate description which remains valid to this day. ↩

Additionally, we can see how, in the history of the Communist
Party of Vietnam, the move to secure advanced weaponry to accelerate
the pace of the war against U.S. imperialism was part of a larger
movement away from proletarian internationalism and a consolidation
to revisionism. ↩

Armando Liwanag, “On the International Relations of the Communist
Porty of the Philippines,” Ang Bayan, July 1987. Excerpted in,
“Reply to Liwang: The CPP and False Friends of the Filipino
Revolution,” A World to Win, Issue 12 (1988), p. 10-11. ↩

A talk of Chairman Mao’s in August 1964. Cited in, Editorial
Staff of Renmin Ribao (People’s Daily), Hongqi (Red Flag), and
Jiefangjun Bao (People’s Liberation Army Daily), “Leninism or
Social Imperialism? A Commentary on the Centenary of the Birth of
the Great Lenin,” Peking Review, Vol. 13, Issue #17, April 24,
1970, p. 7.
http://www.massline.org/PekingReview/PR1970/PR1970-17.pdf↩

Fundamentals of Political Economy Writing Group, Fundamentals of
Political Economy, ed. and trans. George C. Wang (New York: M.E
Sharpe Inc, 1997), p. 201. This text, commonly referred to as “The
Shanghai Textbook” was put together by Maoist leadership in
Shanghai. ↩

The history of the USSR and China has shown that once
revisionists come to power in the party, the state system of
ownership is not an obstacle to running factories and enterprises in
a capitalist manner aimed at profit-maximization. ↩

Needless to say, had Sison succeeded in securing such “aid” it
would have resulted in the betrayal of the Filipino Revolution. ↩

Armando Liwanag, “On the International Relations of the Communist
Porty of the Philippines,” Ang Bayan, July 1987. Excerpted in,
“Reply to Liwang: The CPP and False Friends of the Filipino
Revolution,” A World to Win, Issue 12 (1988), p. 11. ↩

Social-chauvinists refer to those who place the interests of
their nation or their nationality above the interests of the world
proletarian revolution. This was the case when many of the parties
in the Second International supported their country’s bourgeoisie in
World War I. Another form of social chauvinism can be seen in groups
like the Progressive Labor Party in the U.S. who have advocated that
all nationalism is reactionary and thereby deny the basis for the
national liberation struggles of oppressed nations. ↩

Thus far, they have been fairly successful at maneuvering
politically and economically to establish neocolonial relations with
countries around the world, especially in Africa. This is part of
the their larger efforts within the world imperialist system to
establish Chinese dominance of markets, countries, and peoples. In
these efforts the Chinese ruling class often makes use, to one
degree or another, of the U.S. imperialist institutions (like the
IMF and World Bank) and even U.S. wars, like the invasion of Iraq.
While the U.S. led the invasion of Iraq and spent at least a
trillion dollars on the war effort and “regime building,” many
Chinese companies have been able to secure significant market shares
in Iraq, especially in the oil markets. ↩

Even the term peaceful competition between imperialist rivals is,
in some senses, a misnomer. As Lenin pointed out, the imperialists
“peacefully” cooperated in China to put down the Boxer Rebellion and
partition the country at the turn of the 20th century. Relatedly,
the contemporary Chinese imperialist are “peacefully” competing with
other imperialists in Myanmar by setting up Special Economic Zones
on the Rohingya’s land and helping Myanmar’s government commit
genocide to clear the way for factories that will generate
super-profits for the Chinese ruling class. ↩

Communist Party of the Philippines, Constitution and Program,
2016, p. 85. ↩

The political ideology of the WKP has a relatively unique way of
justifying the country’s state capitalist regime. This is primarily
through promoting the idea of Juche, a contradictory and
metaphysical ideology which cloaks their class character of their
nationalist dictatorship in terms of self-reliance. ↩

This turn away from revolutionary politics and towards Soviet
social imperialism was mirrored in various domestic policies. For
example in 1975 Cuba adopted the “Profitability Criterion” in which
workers were paid based on how profitable their managers deemed
their work to be. Relatedly, in a speech in 1959, Castro explicitly
assured white Cubans that they would not have to socialize with
black Cubans and created unofficially segregated housing on the
island. In fact, the racism on the island was so bad that Robert
Williams—the Black American who had fled to Cuba after being
targeted by the U.S. government for advocating armed self-defense
for Black people—left the country and stated that “power in Cuba
is in the hands of the white petty-bourgeoisie.” ↩

While Zhou Enlai was not always a rightist, by the late Cultural
Revolution he had moved in this direction, and pushed for such
things as acknowledging the existence of the state of Israel, the
rehabilitation of Deng Xiaoping, Chinese support for Pakistan’s
military aggression and bombing of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh),
and more. For more on this see The Late Cultural Revolution,
available at:
https://www.massproletariat.info/documents/2016-12-13-Late-Cultural-Revolution.html. ↩